Mobile robots are becoming increasingly commonplace and are used in such diverse fields as space exploration, lawn mowing and floor cleaning. The last decade has seen particularly rapid advancement in the field of robotic floor cleaning devices, especially vacuum cleaners, the primary objective of which is to navigate an area of a home or office autonomously and unobtrusively whilst cleaning the floor.
A known self-guiding vacuum cleaner is exemplified in EP0803224, which vacuum cleaner includes a chassis supporting a housing with a cover and a front part which is movable with respect to the chassis and forms part of a collision detecting system. The cover is secured to the housing and the housing continues immediately behind the front part into an intermediate wall. The intermediate wall continues into a handle by means of which the vacuum cleaner is carriable by a user.
As is common with robotic vacuum cleaners, the chassis supports a cleaner head having a brush bar, a fan/motor unit, a dust container, rechargeable batteries, drive motors for driving the diametrically located wheels, and a further drive motor to drive the brush bar. In addition, the cleaner is provided with an electronic control system interfaced as necessary with the drive motors and sensing systems so as to guide and control movement of the vacuum cleaner over a floor. In order to collect the dust that it has removed from the floor surface the vacuum cleaner is provided with a bag-type dust container that is located in a chamber defined by the intermediate wall described above. As will be appreciated, the dust container is housed within the outer cover of the vacuum cleaner which makes it awkward for a user to access.